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Robert Faiella, president of the American Dental Association, said he doesn’t see it that way.

“What we’re opposed to is the delegation of surgical procedures,” Faiella said. “Everyone deserves the treatment of a dentist and the care of a dentist.”

Faiella says there’s no shortage of dentists in the United States but that the access problem exists because dentists tend to be concentrated in urban areas.

“Our data shows that … certainly, the dentist population has stayed very stable,” Faiella said. “It’s a distribution issue.”

He says ADA is developing a range of programs to address the gap — pushing prevention measures such as fluoride and dental sealants, emergency room diversion programs in which dentists partner with community health clinics to ensure people needing dental care don’t end up in the emergency department — and an ad campaign to encourage parents to make sure their kids brush twice a day.

But New Hampshire state Sen. Peggy Gilmour, a Democrat who’s sponsoring a bill to license “dental hygienist practitioners,” expects the number of dentists in her state to dwindle.

“We are an aging state,” she said. “We don’t have a dental school, and we’re not seeing an influx of dentists.”

Roch says the opposition he’s facing from dentists is similar to the opposition the medical community had to positions like nurse practitioners and physician assistants 40 years ago.